Plague Marine Msu vs Ad Mech

[Special Officer Doofy]

Hello my fellow death guard, I have a specific load out question for some of you more experienced players. I'm restarting some of my death guard and doing a different paint scheme and better bases. Anyways looking to have at least 4 5-man squads of plague marines. Vast majority of the time I play my brother who is Ad mech. His crawlers and stupid robots are all T7. I'm not usually a min/maxer but I am a little OCD and like to wysiwyg as much as possible.

 

With the 7 marines for dark imperium, 7 from the normal box set and 2 easy build three man sets that gives me 4 champions and a total of 20 marines. With only getting two extra plasmas and a blight launcher I thought of doing 2 5 man's of 3 bolt guns and 2 launchers and 2 5 man's of 3 plasma and 2 bolt guns.

 

Playing against mostly ad mech, with some weaker T3-T5 units but alot of T7 and occasional T8 knight b.s. is that a good load out or should I do all bolt guns and launchers, launchers with a plasma champ or all plasma? They really won't get into melee, and sometimes will have reroll ones to hit aura available. Most likely no arch contaminator, that DP is up either with drones or crawlers. I also only limit myself to death guard units (so no allied heretic or nurgle daemons) and only the ones with disgustingly resilience. So no cheap Lords. I know I'm shooting myself in the foot by doing it that way but like I said I get a little OCD about it. Only 1000 points to 2000, closer to 1k games though for now.

 

So, thoughts? I know opponents list vary and so will mine but I rather just do the best load out for now. I guess my biggest question is do you guys think I should put plasmas on the launcher squads champions or no? Only 11 points each but I got to squeeze points where I can. And I'm not going to torture myself and magnetize Troops haha. And sorry if this topic seems redundant, I couldn't find another article specifically about msu load out in particular.

[Dont-Be-Haten]

I've only recently started DG but I find needing to deal with knights is a real problem. My lists have been around forcing my opponent's target priority.

 

Example Mortarion will eat knights for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So a lot of firepower will be pumped into him.

 

So I also bring a 3 man squad of myphitic blight haulers. This is an expensive unit, but a T7 24 wound unit with a 3+/5++/5+++ and fast movement that also gives out cover in the open a very impressive unit for your poxwalkers or death guard.

 

The main thing with this is it gives you a very good medium range fire base while actually being able to do legitimate damage. I think a prince walking/flying up behind them for the ability to re-roll 1s is just icing on the cake. Not wanting to take units without DR is understandable. But I think there's a great place for spawn or a humble Helbrute to give you thT extra crunch at a bargain on points.

 

Otherwise you'll need to be relying on PBC to be your range.

[Dallas Drake]

Plague weapons help a lot, plaguespitters with a Poxbringer close by do work (S8, 6s=D2) and if you can get 2 blight launchers and a plasma champ in your PM squads then take a HQ with arch contaminator you will find it slightly less up hill. I have totalled Leman Russ squadrons with mass blight launchers (I usually run 12 blight launchers min) and arch contaminator. As mentioned in another thread by DemetriiTZ you can also stack debuffs on big targets, getting T8/7 down to T6/5 makes a big difference to wounding with those blight launchers, I have linked the topic below. Honestly, there are very few downsides to adding in a Nurgle Daemons battalion or supreme command for Death Guard, playing competitively I almost always do it.

 

Yeah, T8 is why I include a Poxbringer. Against Knights, I aim Gift (d3 table stat. debuff) and Withering Curse at a Knight, and reroll the d3 to fish for an additional -1T. -1 is sufficient to allow bolters to bury Knights, but -2 means Launchers wound 75% of the time, and that's $.